TRUMP WATCH

Trump’s War on “Losers”: The Early Years

In the late 80s and early 90s, Spy magazine carried out a lonely—and hilarious—war against the preposterous real-estate lordling it famously identified as “short-fingered vulgarian Donald Trump.” Here are some highlights.

In 1988, Spy magazine described Donald Trump as “a short-fingered vulgarian.” The founding editors of the magazine, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, recognized Trump for what he was: the id of New York City, writ large—a bombastic, self-aggrandizing, un–self-aware bully, with a curious relationship to the truth about his supposed wealth and business acumen. He wasn’t so much a Macy’s balloon, ripe for the targeting, as he was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, stomping on everything in his gold-plated path.

It wasn’t pretty. But New York wasn’t all that pretty then, either. It had yet to become the sanitized city of hedge funders and money-in-flight Russian billionaires that it is now, where Trump is just another rich guy on the block—and not even the richest one, at that.

As I recall it (I was a contributing editor at Spy), Trump’s reaction to what Spy wrote—or articles that Spy planned to publish—was to threaten the magazine with lawsuits. The editors lived under the constant threat of litigation. In a gesture that seemed to indicate he had some self-awareness, and possibly even a sense of humor, he sent over a copy of his book, The Art of the Deal, with his hand outlined in bright gold on the cover, to prove that he wasn’t, in fact, short-fingered—but then added a note, promising, “If you hit me, I will hit you back 100 times harder.” Then, as now, he truly believed any press was good press, so long as he thought he had the last word.

Today, 27 years and a reality-TV show later, the rest of the world—or perhaps I should say the “thinking” part of the rest of the world—has come to recognize what we knew about Trump back then. Only instead of being the id of New York City, he’s become the dark, nasty id of America itself: uncensored, unthinking, bullying, angry, forever unapologetic, and vaguely unhinged. From his racist remarks about immigrants to his sexist attack on Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, to the lawsuits he brings or threatens to bring with tiresome regularity (then Spy, now, Univision for attempting to “suppress his freedom of speech” by dropping his Miss U.S.A. and Miss Universe beauty pageants, along with the two celebrity chefs who no longer wish to be associated with him), none of it surprises us. He’s become the Ugly American, writ large, and draped in cheap superlatives: a great American, with a great plan, who will restore our great and glorious gold-plated future. . . . So long as you don’t criticize him, disagree with him, or ask too many questions.

In modern media terms, Donald Trump was our clickbait. He brought us word-of-mouth recognition, and more readers—just the same way he is now bringing eyeballs to newscasts, and page views to Web sites. He’s O.J. Simpson in the Ford Bronco, an unfolding disaster that you can’t quite take your eyes away from, as you wait for him to drive off the road and self-immolate.
Over the course of our years at Spy, we fact-checked his books and his finances (with predictable results), trolled him by sending miniscule checks—as low as 13 cents—to see if he’d cash them (he did), and wrote up his all-but-forgotten business debacles. (Remember the “Trump Castle World Power Boat Championship”?)

And yet, none of it stuck. None of it so much as dinged him, or even seemed to embarrass him. And were The Donald to read this, I’m all but certain he’d reply, “Spy is dead. And I’m running for president, leading in the polls, after starring in the most-watched cable TV news show in history, because the people tuned in to watch me. They love me!”

It would be easy to despair over this. Especially since we’ve elected our share of highly unlikely-to-win candidates. In the long view, who could have predicted that a “B” movie actor—Ronald Reagan—could be elected governor of California, and then go on to unseat the incumbent president to become commander in chief? More recently, who could have imagined that deep-blue Minnesota would elect Jesse “The Body” Ventura as governor, or that even deeper-blue California would send Cher’s ex—Sonny Bono—to Congress, or Arnold Schwarzenegger to Sacramento?

Personally, I’m skeptical of Trump’s current leading numbers in the polls, for two reasons:

First, because contrary to the belief of the media punditocracy, not all Americans live in the minute-to-minute news cycle. Remember the week after Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server became public, and her awful press conference about it at the U.N.? The Lanny Davises of the world insisted it was all irrelevant, and pointed to her continued high standing in the polls as proof that it had no effect. But time and dinner-table conversations eventually take their toll. It still takes weeks—or even a month—for things to percolate down, and reach those who don’t live online and aren’t glued to cable news. I suspect Trump’s numbers will see the same erosion.

Second, as someone whose career was launched writing political advertising, I’m skeptical of the quality—and believability—of the polling numbers that show Trump leading. As any pollster will tell you, in the age of dwindling landlines, do-not-call lists, time-shifted families, and a general reluctance to divulge your political bearings to a stranger on the phone, it’s harder than ever to compile a statistically accurate sample—meaning one that reflects an demographically accurate percentage of voters, by age, and party affiliation. With this in mind, I suspect that the people participating in the current G.O.P. polls are self-selecting, just like Internet polls. They want to vent. And they’re skewing Trump’s numbers upward, in a way that doesn’t reflect reality.

In the end, I have faith that just as Americans ultimately decided that Sarah Palin wasn’t qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, they’re not about to let The Donald get even closer.

Short-fingered or not, on so many, many levels, the presidency is beyond his grasp.

For those in the “glutton for punishment” demographic, here’s a small sampling from the Spy vs. Trump archive: